"Yeh, but how?"
Wallie was looking down at his two lean brown hands on the keys. For a long minute he did not answer. Then: "By thinking about it all the time. And working like hell.... And you've got to be selfish ... You've got to be selfish ..."
As Sid Hahn stared at him, as though hypnotized, the Jap appeared in the doorway. Sid Hahn said, "Stay and have dinner with me," instead of what he had meant to say.
"Oh, I can't! Thanks. I—" He wanted to terribly, but the thought was too much.
"Better."
They had dinner together. Even under the influence of Hahn's encouragement and two glasses of mellow wine whose name he did not know, Wallie did not become fatuous. They talked about music—neither of them knew anything about it, really. Wallie confessed that he used it as an intoxicant and a stimulant.
"That's it!" cried Hahn, excitedly. "If I could play I'd have done more. More."
"Why don't you get one of those piano-players, What-you-call'ems?" Then, immediately, "No, of course not."
"Nah, that doesn't do it," said Hahn, quickly. "That's like adopting a baby when you can't have one of your own. It isn't the same. It isn't the same. It looks like a baby, and acts like a baby, and sounds like a baby—but it isn't yours. It isn't you. That's it! It isn't you!"
"Yeh," agreed Wallie, nodding. So perfectly did they understand each other, this ill-assorted pair.